I finally passed one hundred hours in my save file of Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m really not sure how much time I’d have logged to the game if I could somehow account for the lost progress due to crashes or the hours lost to reverting back a couple or more save files because a choice without sufficient context was going to ruin my experience with the game. I don’t mind reverting in these cases, given how what sometimes feels like a flippant or jokey answer in a dialogue tree can wind up being taken very seriously and sometimes there’s a mismatch between what the game suggests will happen and what actually happens (which seems to be cranked up to eleven as a Dark Urge character). Overall though, as I’ve looked back at my one hundred recorded hours, I realized that a huge amount of that time was spent incredibly focused on the mechanical aspects of the game rather than the roleplaying and inter-character aspects of it. Sure, the ratio is probably much more balanced than most similar games I’ve played, but it feels odd at first blush to realized that it is closer to a standard video game RPG than to my experiences with the tabletop rolepalying game this CRPG was inspired by. As I’ve thought about it more, especially as I played last night, I noticed that, despite only doing one major fight last night, I spent about eighty percent of my play time focused entirely on mechanics. A couple percent of the remainder goes to puzzle solving and logistics and then the rest goes to watching dialogue play out and doing my best to roleplay my player character.
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Finally Playing A Pair Of Legend of Zelda Games In Sequence
In one of the latest updates to the perks provided by having a Nintendo Online subscription, the Legend of Zelda games Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons were added to the Game Boy Color section. As a child, I was obsessed with the dual nature of these games. They’d blown my mind by introducing the idea of transferring save data between them by putting in specially generated passcodes or by using a link cable when you started a new game. I was not quite ten when they came out and it had literlly never occurred to me that you might be able to bring something from one game into another one. While a soft continuity (some aspects of a game carrying forward into another in a way that subtly influences your experience) are still fairly common, I don’t know if I’ve played another game that is quite so drastically influenced by including data from another. Technically speaking, I’ve never played any game that is this drastically influenced because while I’ve played both games, I was never able to play them sequentially.
Continue readingBaldur’s Gate 3 Is Missing Something
I have continued to put a ridiculous number of hours into Baldur’s Gate 3. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game this intensely and consistently. I mean, I typically don’t play games that require a great deal of focus and personal investment on work nights, since I know they tend to make me ignore the passage of time, but I’ve not only started doing that, I’ve been doing it consistently enough to go from staying up until the wee hours of the morning to stopping at a reasonable time. Turns out two straight weeks of obscenely little sleep thanks to a combination of Baldur’s Gate 3 and stress will shake me out of my worst sleep habits. I’ve managed to stop playing between eleven and twelve at night for four nights in a row as of writing this, and only once squeaked in under that deadline solely due to the game crashing as I started “one more thing”ing myself into what might have wound up being the wee hours. Still! I’m counting this as a win, if only because I’m still enjoying myself and am now clear-headed during my work days (even if I’m still recovering from a severe sleep deficit and struggling to stay away right after I eat lunch). Baldur’s Gate 3 really has a lot going for it and I really don’t have much of anything negative to say about my play experience in the one hundred played hours I’ve accrued on my save file.
Continue readingResurfacing For Air After A Weekend Lost In Baldur’s Gate 3
Other than preparation for and then hosting a Pathfinder Second Edition one-shot, I spent my entire weekend playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I was finally able to play it in more than drips and drabs (which, for me, meant an hour or two at a time, since I won’t bother to turn my computer on for anything else). I wound up starting a new game with two friends and then taking this large chunk of time to wrap up loose ends, finish map exploration, and, in the wee hours of the morning, finish the main quest points of Act 1. I rescued Halsin, helped the Tieflings, dealt with a swamp witch, got to absolutely wreck some weaker enemies with my brand new level 5 abilities (still haven’t cast Fireball, though, since I mismanaged Wyll’s spell slots and forgot to short rest before the next fight), and prepared myself for an underground adventure. After this, I’m moving into entirely new territory (I never did the Underdark stuff in Early Access) and I’m excited to play chunks of the game I’ve never encountered before.
Continue readingBaldur’s Gate 3 Still Has Plenty Of Surprises After All That Early Access
I, like many other people, started diving into Baldur’s Gate 3 today. I’d already played a bunch while it was in Early Access, despite normally avoiding paying for games before they’re fully released and avoiding doing testing work that I’m not getting paid for (though, obviously, some exceptions apply since I’ve helped out friends with projects in the past). I actually bought it way back in early 2021, because there was a big media push for it and it was on sale. Or I had a coupon of some kind. Maybe a voucher? I don’t remember that period terribly well, on account of early 2021 including one of my worst insomnia boughts since high school, so I’m not sure how I got it for fifteen dollars, only that I’ve got a receipt that says I paid fifteen dollars plus tax for it. I remember thinking that it was probably not going to be that cheap at any time prior to a special sale the winter holiday period after it came out, so I might as well get it then and never play it. Then one of my friends also got it and we played it a bunch together. Not a whole lot, maybe twenty hours total, but enough that I was genuinely excited for the game’s release and fairly confident in my ability to zip through the early parts of the game after replaying them so many times with my friend.
Continue readingSpider-Man Is A Very Moving Game
I’ve spent the last week or so, ever since I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, playing Spider-Man: Remastered on the PS5. I’ve already written about it a bit this week, as I rambled and ranted on about how I am finding less joy than ever in what used to be my favorite video game occupation: collectibles and collectible-based challenges. I even wrote about it back in 2018, during my initial run of daily blog posts (and I’m not linking anything that old to a current blog post), but I’ve only ever glossed over my favorite part of the game. I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really talked about what draws me to Spider-Man games and Spider-Man in general. The latter is a bit more complex, though I can probably summarize it by outlining how much of myself I saw in Peter Parker and how much Peter Parker was always present whenever Spider-Man was on the screen or page. That, plus the enormous responsibility placed on this teenager’s shoulders, the grief that overwhelms and informs his early years as a superhero, and the fact that he is almost always fighting an uphill battle no matter what situation he finds himself in. A lot of reasons why I’d identify with this character as a kid and why the stories told through him might resonate with me. When it comes to the games, though, the answer is much more simple.
Continue readingWrapping Up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over the weekend. Took more than one hundred fifty hours of gameplay over the course of two months (with, you know, a three and a half week gap of not playing at all), and I still have tons of quests, Korok seeds, and unexplored areas if I ever want to spend more time in the world before whatever DLC there will be comes out. It feels a little unreal, if I’m being honest, since I wound up doing the last few major portions of the game in a relatively short time. Mostly because I’d accidentally done huge sections of them while wandering around the world in search of shrines or just exploring something that look cool before I got to the part of the game that prompted them. I’ll admit I really struggled to do some of those things when I stumbled across them because it was clear that I wasn’t supposed to be doing them yet (I got the Sage of Spirit as my second sage, because I wanted to see what was inside the permanent thunderstorm and literally just got lucky since my interrupted flight toward said clouds landed me right next to the final shrine of those sky islands), but at least it let me do them when I got there. It was a pretty fun game and I definitely enjoyed it overall, but there was a lot of stuff that just doesn’t really feel like it landed (pun absolutely intended) well.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 21
It’s been three months since the last one of these, which feels odd given how frequently I’ve been both tired and sad during that time period. I don’t really have a great answer about why it took me this long to write another one (maybe I was too excited about Tears of the Kingdom to think about anything else or maybe I was too tired/sad to think about anything other than how tired/sad I was?), but this past week has been a doozy that has left me emotionally drained and sad in a more manageable way than the past few months so I guess I’m back to writing about The Legend of Zelda rather than what I’m sad about. Which, you know, probably is a good thing since these posts are an effort to shake myself out of my mood and lift my spirits, so it’s definitely progress that I’m trying to do anything positive at all.
Continue readingThe Legend of Zelda: Barriers to Play Is The Worst Sequel Ever
I haven’t played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in three weeks. Three of the five weeks (as of writing this, anyway) the game has been out. Sure, I got maybe one hundred hours in during those two weeks (though I actually played eighty to nintey of those and the balance is me just leaving my Switch on while doing other stuff), but I’m maybe fifty percent of the way through the game if I’m guessing its depth correctly. My sporadic ability to play the game made it difficult to focus on getting anything specific done (not to mention the executive dysfunction I’ve been struggling with over the last two months), so I wasn’t even playing through things efficiently. I don’t mind a lack of efficiency so much, since I was definitely having a lot of fun building things and driving weird contraptions around, but it does mean that I feel like there’s still so much game to play and that it’ll take another one hundred hours to complete it.
In actuality, I bet I could finish it in fifty if I stopped messing around and focused, but that feels a little beside the point of playing a video game I enjoy as much as every entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Regardless, I’m now four days into being done with unpacking and I haven’t touched it yet, despite having the time to play some games. I can definitely chalk some of it up to the newness (to me) factor of Diablo IV and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, both of which feel more compelling and urgent than Tears of the Kingdom does, but that’s really just a drop in the bucket. Most of the bucket is full of a terrible mixture of executive dysfunction and emotional exhaustion. Which is also why Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the easier game of the lot to play right now and why all my thoughts of playing different games involve things that aren’t Tears of the Kingdom or Diablo IV.
The explanation for why it’s difficult to get myself to play Diablo IV is easy. It is a very noisy game. There’s a lot going on. When I’m stressed out or tired (or both), it can be incredibly overwhelming, especially when my old PC audio system had to get thrown out after I started packing it up and discovered some of the cables were a little melted. Listening to something on headphones makes it feel much more immediate and present than listening to it in the environment around me, so I tend to avoid headphones when I’m stressed out and tired, and that’s just with normal music or podcasts, all of which has a lot less sensory input than a game like Diablo IV does. Once I feel less drained and emptied out by life, it will be a lot easier to play Diablo IV and I’ll be able to do it for longer than a few chunks of an hour at a time.
Tears of the Kingdom is a much more complex situation. Part of it is sheer distance in time now, since not only has it been three weeks, but it was an entire apartment ago. Packing, moving, and unpacking separate me from my last experience with the game and the stress of all that colors my perceptions of it. Not to mention that I was gearing up for the game’s release when my friend finally explained why she was ignoring me, or that most of my gameplay happened around an incredibly fun but also incredibly stressful trip to the East Coast to be in my friends’ wedding. There’s a lot of emotional baggage, good and bad and just overwhelming in general, attached to the game in my mind. None of which is the game’s fault, but sense memories and emotional associations are difficult to unravel and counteract. I mean, it’s been more than half my lifetime since I first played Luminous Arc while listening to the first official soundtrack from Scrubs but I still can’t hear most of those songs without remembering myself sitting in my armchair in my bedroom, playing on my DS as I battled through the early levels of the game. I mean, most of them even conjure up images from the game when I just think about the songs, let alone when I am actively listening to them.
The stresses of this year have continued to build upon each other without me ever getting a chance to release the pressure or address any of the issues that either resulted from the stress or that caused the stress in the first place. Right now, as I’m writing this in the middle of June, I’m finally facing a mostly-empty social calendar so I can finally catch my breath and still I can’t seem to escape petty drama, hefty emotional issues, and the growing anxiety around people not responding to my messages when I try to reach out to them (the thing with my friend took one of my oldest anxieties and fed it until it has become difficult to ignore, deny, or cope with right now). I mean, I was invited on a trip in September that I know I shouldn’t go on, but I’m putting off telling the group because that will require emotional energy I don’t have. I know the answer. I know I could techincally afford it but really shouldn’t spend the money. I just don’t want to have to cope with the feeling that I might be letting people down or missing out on another chance to connect with these people.
These are all hurdles I will overcome eventually. There’s just a lot of them right now and I’m so tired I can barely stand, let along start trying to jump or dismantle them. Eventually, I’m sure, I’ll start playing Tears of the Kingdom again and driving around in a weird car will be a ton of fun that doesn’t involve any of the weird emotional associations I’ve made. I’ll slowly break through them all and be able to just enjoy myself without needing to tackle any of the emotions or issues my mind and heart have associated with the game. For now, though, I’ll probably be sticking with something a little less emotionally complex.
Getting Stuck On Visuals in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
I’ve begun to play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor during what limited time I’ve been able to put toward video gaming (which isn’t much between unpacking, settling in to my apartment, recovering from total exhaustion, and my busy day-job). It has been a lot of fun, even if it feels like a weird experience compared to what I remember of the first game. I’m not certain the game itself is any different, but the way I’m experiencing it very much is. I played Fallen Order on my PC the first time, struggling through what felt like odd computer controls as I stubbornly refused to consider playing it on a console. I’d already bought it on the PC, after all. Why should I spend MORE money on it just to make my experience better? Eventually, my protests faded away and I played my two subsequent play-throughs (one full and one partial) on the PS4, though most of that was during my “listen to a podcast while playing a video game so my eyes, ears, and hands were completely occupied at all times” phase, so the experience of the game didn’t really stick with me.
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